character_set_client is the session value of
the character_set_client system
variable when the view was created.
collation_connection is the session value of
the collation_connection system
variable when the view was created.

MySQL lets you use different
sql_mode settings to tell the
server the type of SQL syntax to support. For example, you might
use the ANSI SQL mode to
ensure MySQL correctly interprets the standard SQL concatenation
operator, the double bar (||), in your
queries. If you then create a view that concatenates items, you
might worry that changing the
sql_mode setting to a value
different from ANSI could
cause the view to become invalid. But this is not the case. No
matter how you write out a view definition, MySQL always stores
it the same way, in a canonical form. Here is an example that
shows how the server changes a double bar concatenation operator
to a CONCAT() function:

The advantage of storing a view definition in canonical form is
that changes made later to the value of
sql_mode will not affect the
results from the view. However an additional consequence is that
comments prior to SELECT are
stripped from the definition by the server.